Running across the sky, two hundred feet up, Missy was enjoying herself to a level she was fairly certain wasn't strictly allowed. If this was what Saurial and her Family felt like, she was very glad for them.

As she moved she was getting steadily more adept at creating small warps connecting her feet to the surface under her on the literal run, no longer needing to make the gestures. She'd found that while she couldn't yet make one move around very much, she could make them pop up a foot or two without too much trouble, the energy enough to add to her steps and convert them into a sort of jump. Syncing them with her running took quite a bit of practice and a few scary near-misses, but she'd refined the technique enough after a quarter of an hour to allow her to reach speeds far more than a normal run, each step being close to fifteen feet horizontally. Tilting them a little seemed to make it even more effective, as she was sort of running downhill the entire way.

Even so, she was starting to get a little out of breath. While she was in very good condition, the PRT-mandated training and exercising enough to keep her much fitter than a normal girl her age, she realized that to do this right was going to need a lot more stamina, which was going to ultimately require a lot of running around. It was a price she was willing to pay for the sheer rewards it would give.

Slowing down to catch her breath somewhere over the middle of the commercial district, she formed a larger than normal platform and stopped in the middle of it, panting slightly. Idly wondering if she could work out how to use the space warping to offset most of her weight, somehow, she looked around her, admiring the city skyline and the lights in various buildings.

About two hundred and fifty feet away, she could see an office building below her, a number of rooms still lit, with a few people wandering around. A little more than a fifth of a mile away was the Medhall building, the roof a little higher than she was. The penthouse office was lit up, not brightly, but enough to show that there was someone home. Curious, she wandered in that direction, forming a sloping ramp without too much real thought, since it was becoming an automatic reflex by this point.

She had to be careful not to try to link the ground under a pedestrian to her next platform, but her power allowed her to feel the presence of something that the Manton limit would cause trouble with and she was becoming quite deft at moving the ground connection point around until it found a suitable surface to use. It had occurred to her that with some practice she could probably just pick a fixed point somewhere no one was likely to end up in, like an isolated spot on top of a tall building, then just link to that spot for all her platforms. That, she'd decided, would be a very good thing to try doing, as it would let her cross over water, which the current method of using the point directly under her wouldn't.

It would need a lot of work, though, and now wasn't the time to experiment with that sort of thing.

Moving closer to the building and ascending, Missy ended up peering into the office window from a few feet away. Max Anders was pacing back and forth, sipping from a cut-glass tumbler that sparkled in the subdued lighting in the room, waving his free hand in sharp gestures while talking to another man, who was listening and nodding occasionally. The Medhall CEO seemed somewhat annoyed, judging by the expression he was wearing, and just a little worried. She wondered what the problem was.

Whenever she saw him on TV he always looked entirely confident and completely assured, very smooth indeed. He was a good talker, his voice nearly as impressive as Über's, but with a certain smugness that she found a little wearing after a while. Most people seemed to think of him as a very sharp man and one who was definitely a charismatic and effective speaker, but she'd heard quite a few adults express the opinion that anyone who was that good at swaying a crowd probably had some sort of agenda. She didn't know, herself, not having the experience, but she had always sort of wondered what it would take to puncture his assurance.

A thought struck her, and she started smirking to herself inside her cloak. It was probably wrong, but it was also easy, and she thought very funny as well. Unable to resist, she moved closer to the glass, stopping under a foot from it, then folded her arms, making sure her hands and forearms were visible outside her cloak. Waiting for the man to turn towards the window, she let the invisibility go, watching with glee as his eyes widened comically and he dropped his glass, which shattered on the floor.

The man gaped at her, while she just stood there, hovering well over two hundred feet above the sidewalk below, not moving. After several seconds, he shouted and turned to the other man, who was sitting in a chair and leafing through a folder. As he turned, she activated her invisibility once again, watching with satisfaction as her victim pointed while saying something to his companion. The second man looked at Max, then the window, appearing confused, before shrugging.

The CEO turned to the window, looking around wildly, then approached it with caution, peering out, up, down, and sideways. She giggled faintly, less than eighteen inches away on the other side of the glass. After he'd looked through her a couple of times, he turned around and started talking rapidly, his words a faint mumble through the window.

His colleague looked confused, staring past him at the window, then at Max. Eventually he shrugged again, replying in a way that seemed to indicate he couldn't see anything. There was a long pause before he turned back to his folder. Max glared at him, then spun around and looked out the window.

Missy became visible again, watching with great satisfaction as the man paled instantly and jumped violently away from the glass, with a shout she heard clearly on the other side. Once again he looked over his shoulder, so of course by the time he and his companion both looked at her again, she was transparent.

Poor Max looked very worried now. He put his hands on the window and frantically stared around, looking upwards with his face on the glass as if he expected to see something there. The other man got up and came over, putting his hand on his companion's shoulder and apparently reassuring him. The expression on the face of the owner of Medhall was hilarious, he didn't seem to know whether to start swearing or crying.

She was having severe trouble trying not to laugh wildly at this point. Missy knew she was being bad, but it was mostly harmless fun on her part, and she simply couldn't resist. Wishing she'd brought a camera, she resolved to ask Saurial where she'd got the one she customarily wore on her head when out and about, thinking it would be fun to get one herself.

While the pair on the other side of the glass were still looking out over the city, she moved around the side of the building to the window that pointed towards the DWU, then waited. Eventually, Max turned around and looked in her direction. As soon as he did, she dropped the invisibility again, then giggled like an idiot as he went entirely white. Raising a hand she gravely saluted him, before turning and walking down an invisible flight of stairs, just in time to miss the other man seeing her when he turned around as well. As soon as her head was below the window level she went invisible again and ran off laughing insanely, wondering how the poor man was going to remember this event.

"They're fucking everywhere, Victor!" Max moaned, holding his head in his hands. He was sitting behind his desk, shaking slightly, and yet again covered in about a hundred dollars worth of incredibly rare whiskey and down another expensive pair of shoes. "First it was lizards hanging off the building grinning at me like some sort of hideous alien gecko. Now they've got a tiny little Death tormenting me. What next? Fucking Roswell Grays? Are we going to get beamed up and probed? Why me? What did I do to them?"

"How do you know it was the Family?" Victor asked, somewhat doubtfully. Max raised his head and glared at him.

"It's always the fucking Family these days! If something bizarre or flat out impossible happens, especially if it's creepy as fuck, it's them! Lovecraft was right, but he didn't know more than the tip of it. They're out there watching us all the time, I can feel it."

"I think you might be getting just a little too paranoid about them, Max," Victor said very carefully and gently. He yelped as Max surged from his seat and grabbed his lapels, pulling him close.

"You can't be too paranoid about the Family," his boss hissed, his eyes a little more wild than ideal. They were twitching around the room like he expected to see Saurial hanging from the ceiling. "They're everywhere! We don't know all of what they can do, but the things we do know are insane! They'd make Behemoth cry and the Simurgh look over her shoulder, wondering what they were going to do next. And they've got it in for me."

"Um… You've never even met any of them, right? And we're being very careful not to cause offense. So I doubt very much they're out to get us."

"Really, Victor? Really? Then why was a four foot six tall thing in a cloak standing on thin air outside my window?!"

"I… can't answer that," Victor replied after a few seconds.

Max released him and dropped into his expensive leather chair again with a squeal of protesting springs. "I can't take much more of this," he said in a disconsolate voice. "I try to be a good leader, I try to be strong and keep us on top of the lower orders and the underclass, but… when the lizards run around scaring Endbringers and the Triumvirate equally, and Death is outside my window grinning at me, it's starting to get a little too much to handle."

"I doubt it was Death," Victor reassured his superior. "Just some cape in a cloak who thought it was funny to wind you up."

"There was no one in the cloak," Max sighed. "I could see right inside the hood the second time and it was empty! I swear to you, it was empty. And whatever it was wasn't flying, it was just standing there like it was on the damn floor, two hundred and thirty feet off the ground. I could see the arms but they weren't human at all. Not reptilian, either, more sort of… leathery. Like a zombie or something."

"A tiny headless zombie Death?" Victor looked a little skeptical, then flinched when his boss glared at him due to his tone. "Are you sure you didn't imagine it?"

"No, I fucking didn't imagine it. Not three times in a row. The third time it went down a flight of stairs that wasn't there."

Victor stared, as Max flushed. "I know what that sounds like but it's true. I wish it wasn't."

"Maybe you need a holiday," the skill-thief suggested delicately. "You know, get away from all the weirdness of Brockton Bay. It's so quiet at the moment there's nothing serious here to do on the less legitimate front and Medhall is ticking along well. You could take a week in the south somewhere, get away from this damp cold weather and have some time in the sun."

After staring at him for a while, Max nodded slowly. "Maybe you're right." He looked over at the pile of broken glass and expensive liquor, then down at his freshly ruined shoes, and sighed. "Maybe you're right."

"I'll look into some good destinations."

"Victor?" The other man turned back. "Make sure it's somewhere a long way from the water, OK?"

"Sure, Max. No problem."

Still snickering under her breath, Missy headed away from the Medhall building towards the residential areas of the city, uphill and inland from the bay, taking a loop around the shopping district on her way to her house, mainly just to look around from this unusual viewpoint. She wasn't sure when she'd be able to get out as Cloak again and wanted to make the most of it, despite not wanting to be out too late. She was going to have some fast talking to do already when she got home, she just knew it.

It would still be worth it, though.

It might be possible to get out tomorrow, but it might not as well, so she was damn well going to have fun while she could. The thing with Max Anders was going to make her giggle every time she thought of it for weeks.

Hearing a faint shout from below, she looked down, seeing to her amusement Carlos and Chris chasing after a group of three men she recognized as probably Merchants, while a block behind them Assault and two cops were man-handling two more of the same group. She could see a smashed window in a liquor store and guessed that they'd tried robbing it, by the cunning expedient of kicking the window in. An alarm was just audible now she was listening for it, somewhere inside the building.

Carlos was flying after them, ducking as one of them fired a revolver over his shoulder, even though it wouldn't really damage him. The boy had told her that while he could take being shot, it still hurt quite a bit, so it was better to get out of the way if possible.

Chris was gliding along on his hoverboard twenty feet to the right, down the middle of the street and ten feet up, crouched low with his laser pistols ready. He fired a shot, barely missing the one with the gun as the man jinked sideways, showing twitchy reflexes probably juiced up on some sort of drug. Another shot grazed his shoulder and made him spin then drop, but he rolled to his feet and kept running.

His two compatriots had used the brief delay to dive into an alley to the left, legging it with alacrity along the narrow thoroughfare, kicking trash cans over as they went in a fairly pointless attempt to block the passage from pursuit. Considering their pursuers were both flying it was a total waste of time and effort, but then, Merchants weren't generally renowned for their intelligence and forward-looking insight.

After she'd watched for a moment, she grinned and turned, following the men from above in a series of long bounds, quickly getting in front of them. Carefully timing things, she looped the end of the alley back on itself, making the space inside it run in a twenty-foot loop with no exit. With a little care she was able to do this in a way that didn't produce her normal visual distortions, which were a signature of her 'Vista' powerset.

The two men entered her trap and kept running, not noticing they were going through the same section of alleyway over and over again for a surprisingly long time. She stood fifty feet up and watched, trying desperately not to laugh out loud.

Eventually the pair realized something was wrong, slowing down, then stopping and looking puzzled. One of them walked forward slowly, reaching out for the far end of the alley, only to shout in surprise when he found himself walking towards his friend from behind without any warning.

"What the fuck!" he yelled, turning around and charging back the way he'd come. His companion, who had turned around at his shout, looked very surprised when he ran into his back from the other side. Both of them fell to the ground, swearing violently. The first man pushed the second one off him, then clambered to his feet, pulling a gun from his pocket and shooting at the mouth of the alley.

She'd just had time to notice the weapon and direct the bullets down into the pavement, where they mushroomed and sprayed little bits of high velocity metal around the place, peppering both men with shrapnel. The second one yelled and cuffed his friend on the head.

"Stop that you idiot," he screamed. "It must be a cape."

"Good guess, criminal scum," she hissed, becoming visible and walking downwards towards them. Both men shrieked in shock and whirled, looking wildly around, before peering up at her. The man with the gun aimed it and fired before she could react.

She flinched as the bullet impacted on her cloak with a dull thud, then dropped to the ground, completely flattened. She didn't even feel it.

All three of them stared at the expended round, before he emptied the magazine at her. The rest of the rounds fell around her as she kept descending, now sure that Saurial's handiwork was up to the job. Carlos and Chris flew and glided around the corner as the Merchant was half-way through proving that he was rather slow on the uptake, stopping and staring when they spotted her.

Missy smirked, deciding that this was definitely fun.

Stopping his board, Chris gaped at the cloaked figure that was, as far as he could tell, walking slowly down a flight of stairs that didn't exist. The large black-gray cloak flowed and rippled around the form inside, disguising it to the point he couldn't tell anything except vague size, which was something under five feet. The large hood was entirely dark inside, no facial features visible at all. He couldn't even see feet under it.

The Merchant firing at her was whimpering over the sound of the shots, which echoed around the alley resoundingly. The cloaked figure ignored the shots entirely, the bullets dropping to the tarmac beneath it as if they'd hit something that completely absorbed the kinetic energy.

He glanced at Carlos, who was also staring open-mouthed, then went back to watching.

Reaching the ground, the figure stopped and looked at the two Merchants. "You can't win, you know," it hissed in a voice that sent a shiver down his spine all the way to the base. It was a completely atavistic reaction to something that was even creepier than when he'd first met Saurial. Even though it was only a few feet high, the small creature radiated a level of danger that was worrying.

It also seemed amused, which was, if anything, worse.

"What the fuck are you?" the man yelled, fumbling for another magazine. He popped the first one out and reloaded with trembling hands, the shape merely watching. Raising the gun, he aimed directly into the hood and emptied the magazine again. All the rounds simply vanished into the darkness.

The cloaked person, assuming it was a person, ignored this completely, not moving at all. When he finished he stared in horror, then threw the gun, which also disappeared into the void under the hood.

By now Chris was severely creeped out. There was something about what he'd just seen which went from impressive right through into horrifying without even slowing down. The way that the thing in the cloak had entirely ignored something like thirty 9mm rounds, half of which were to the face, was more than a little impressive and rather scary.

"Are you finished, human miscreant?" The thing sounded mildly bored now. He realized it was probably female. "Your fate awaits you. Your choice is to allow apprehension by the local law enforcement, or let me deal with you."

She laughed softly, while all four present paled a little, the Merchants more than the Wards. "I must warn you that you may prefer jail to… what I can do."

She reached into her hood and pulled the gun out, looking at it for a moment, then doing… something… to it. Carlos turned his head and tried not to throw up, while Chris put his hand over his mouth, his eyes wide. Both Merchants stared, then lost their lunches.

"Higher dimensions are so very amusing to play with, but their effects on living creatures can be somewhat unusual," the figure added casually, making what had been a gun warp and twist horrifically in her hand. Chris heard footsteps behind him, looking over his shoulder to see Assault and one of the cops approaching warily, staring at the cloaked thing.

"What are you?" one of the Merchants said in a hoarse whisper.

"I?" The figure laughed again, the sound going through everyone like fingernails on a blackboard. "I am Cloak. You are criminals." She leaned forward a little. "Cloak does not like criminals."

"Oh, fuck," the other one moaned. He looked at his companion, then both of them turned around. "Can we go with you, please?" he asked mournfully.

The cop glanced at Assault, then holstered the pistol he'd been pointing at the Merchants, pulling a set of handcuffs from his belt. Moving forwards, he cuffed one of them, while Assault carefully zip-tied the other one, trying not to stray too close to the unknown cape. The other officer turned up, gaped at Cloak, then helped his companion take both Merchants back towards the car he'd arrived in, the lights from which strobed down the alley, spreading red and blue flashes across the scene.

Chris was more than a little disturbed to note that even when the light shone directly into the hood that was pulled over Cloak's head, he couldn't see anything but darkness inside. Darkness that had a sense of much greater depth to it than should have been possible.

She stopped playing with the gun, making it revert to what looked like normal, then tossed it towards Assault, who caught it and flicked the safety on.

"New cape?" he asked slowly. "I've never heard of 'Cloak' before."

"New?" the whispery hissing voice sounded thoughtful. "Perhaps not the right word. I have been around for… some time. Recent circumstances allow me to join in with the interesting events your world is full of."

All three of them looked at each other. That sounded… weird.

"Are you, perhaps, a member of the Family?" Carlos asked after a moment.

Cloak seemed to ponder the question for a moment. "Not precisely," she finally replied. "The Family are best considered close friends and allies currently. It is difficult to explain in human terms."

One of the definitely not human hands reappeared from inside the enveloping cloth, making a small gesture. "We are connected in a number of ways, though. Quite deeply."

She looked around at them all, then added, "I must leave, I have other matters to attend to. Farewell, heroes."

Turning, she started walking down the alley, each step raising her further from the ground. They gaped, as it was the weirdest method of not-quite flying they'd ever seen. After a few seconds, when she was twenty feet up, Assault called, "Hey! How can we contact you? Are you interested in coming in for power testing? Where do you come from?"

Cloak paused, looking back at them. "I will be around. No. Elsewhere. Goodbye." She resumed climbing, then to their shock faded from view completely as she passed the roof level.

Chris stared, then looked at Carlos, before very carefully moving forward to where the invisible staircase, which had been climbed so obviously it had to have a physical existence, had been. He waved his hand in front of him, but found nothing. Moving back and forth, Carlos joining in the search, they checked the entire end of the alley right up to a hundred feet off the ground and came up empty.

Rejoining Assault on the ground, they exchanged glances once more.

"Well, I have to say that's not the sort of thing you see every day," the Protectorate cape finally said with an odd expression. "Even around here."

"Who or what was that?" Carlos asked slowly. "And how did she do that?"

"I have no fucking idea at all. The voice was enough to make me wonder if she's sort of reptilian under there. But the hands… Maybe there are weirder things around than giant lizards, and that's not something I ever thought I'd say," the man sighed. "Shit. Just when I thought I had a handle on all this."

"What do we put in the report?" Chris asked a little helplessly.

"Hell, I don't know. Empty cloak with demonic powers aided in apprehension of fleeing felons, maybe? Then climbed a staircase that wasn't there and vanished at the top?" Assault shrugged. "That was just surreal. Even Raptaur is easier to understand. Another thing I never thought I'd hear come out of my mouth. The next thing you know we'll be getting reports of people opening closets and finding the delivery entrance to Narnia in them." He sighed again. "Fuck it. Come on, I need a burger, and ideally a beer. Patrol's over."

Turning, he headed down the alley to the main street, muttering something under his breath. Carlos looked at Chris, then up before following with a very peculiar expression on his face.

Chris stared around, thinking. Things were definitely getting steadily more and more strange in this city, in his view.

Shaking his head he trailed after his companions, wondering what exactly was under that cloak, and also wondering if he really wanted to know.

Heading rapidly homewards, Missy waited until she was a few hundred yards away before she let the laughter out. She was immensely proud of her performance, thinking that she'd said all the right things to seriously confuse the issue of who Cloak really was. With any luck, no one would work it out for some time, ideally ever.

This was definitely going to be good.